Crackdown in Kerala

All week long, the tense and secret conferences went on in New Delhi. First, Prime Minister Nehru called at the red sandstone palace of President Rajendra Prasad. A few minutes after Nehru drove off, his daughter, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the new head of the ruling Congress Party, drove up. Later, President Prasad called on his bedridden Home Affairs Minister. Finally, the decision that Nehru has so long dreaded was made.

Last week, under a constitutional provision empowering the President to assume control of any state government that is unable to function in accordance with the constitution, Prasad formally took over troubled Kerala until new elections could be held.

Violated Paradise. As India's only Communist-run state--and the world's only existing Communist government to have achieved power through legal elections--Kerala should have been a show place for Asia's Reds. Instead, it seemed to violate almost every promise that a workers' paradise is supposed to offer. Its local Action Committees not only disrupted law and order; they raised havoc with farm production. When Communist Chief Minister E.M.S. Namboodiripad tried to impose the Communist line upon Kerala's private schools, he united against himself two usually antagonistic groups, the wealthy, conservative Hindu sect called the Nairs and the state's large Roman Catholic population. Unrest that at first manifested itself in small student demonstrations soon became a statewide tide of revulsion.

For all their talk about "people's democracy," the Communists seemed unable to cope with Gandhi-style passive resistance except by mass arrests, using guns and steel-tipped lathees. On four separate occasions, the police fired into crowds. They killed 15 people, slapped 10,000 Gandhi-style demonstrators in jail. Nor did the Communists help their cause when they openly applauded Red China's brutal invasion of Tibet.

Personal Regards. From the start, partly because of a genuine distaste for meddling with a democratically elected government and partly out of a fear of what the Communists might do in retaliation, Prime Minister Nehru balked at taking action. When Kerala's governor finally sent in a report that things had got out of hand, Nehru still hoped to persuade Namboodiripad to resign in peace. Namboodiripad himself talked as if he wanted to--but was talked out of it by higher Red authority.

Even in ordering Namboodiripad out of office, Nehru characteristically sent him assurances of "warm personal regards." Nehru's daughter Indira had no such attitude. What about the Communist threat to stir up trouble all over India? Snapped Indira: "When have the Communists not created trouble?"

The Communists lost no time in proving her right. Employing the same opening tactics that the opposition, used in Kerala, Communists in West Bengal issued a white paper against the Congress-run local government charging corruption and nepotism. Along with big Andhra Pradesh state, which also suffers from soaring food prices, West Bengal offers fertile soil for Communist propaganda. But by their own violence in Kerala, the Reds have lost much of the surprisingly strong sympathy they once commanded throughout India.

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